MLB Halter Top Day?

This item in our local paper brought back some memories. And it got me to wondering... did other major-league baseball teams have "Halter Top Day"?

Back in the 70's this was a guaranteed sellout every year at the Kansas City Royals' stadium. A free Royals halter top to every female fan. It was always on a really hot day, which guaranteed that many of the recipients would put them on...

To commemorate its 40th anniversary, the Kansas City Royals are poised to revive one of the team’s most popular – albeit infamous – promotions ever, Halter Top Day.

Think of it as a return to those heady (PG-13) days of the ’70s and ’80s when Royal blue halter tops were distributed to ticket-toting female fans. Hey and they were dude magnets too.

At some point in time though, Halter Top Day went away – too tacky, too tired – whatever. Which brings us to the fact that the team is hosting a series of “retro nights” celebrating the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

“It’s not guaranteed, but the marketing department is asking fans to vote on their favorite promotions of all time and it would be a surprise to everyone if halter tops didn’t top the list or be in the top five,” says Royals spokesman Toby Cook. “I’ve seen the prototype.”

Popular as it was, Halter Top Day was always a bit over the, uh, top.

“They were infamous,” Cook muses. “The other infamous thing with the Halter Top Days was the young ladies would go ahead and change into them, especially in the right and left field GA sections – which was not lost on some of the ball players...”

This isn’t the first time, by the way, that the Royals contemplated bringing Halter Top Day back. “I hear about this so often it’s unbelievable,” then Royals PR czar Mike Levy told me in a 1998 interview.

“Let’s put it this way, certain promotions at one time were politically correct and now they’re not,” he said. “Back when they did Halter Top Day they had plenty of attendance, but I don’t know if it would work today. I guess the best you could say about it is we always have it under consideration, because each year it continues to resurface in our marketing session.”

Then there was the issue of t!t-for-tat, Levy said. “If we did ‘Halter Top Day’ some women would want to have ‘Speedo Day.’ And that’s just not going to happen.”